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babylonsister's JournalRestaurant Worker Says She Was Fired for Refusing to Wear 'Trump 2020' Mask
Restaurant Worker Says She Was Fired for Refusing to Wear 'Trump 2020' Mask
Can an employer legally fire someone for refusing to wear a specific political message? The answer is: maybe.
by Jelisa Castrodale
Jun 9 2020, 4:25pm
In late May, Ohio governor Mike DeWine gave the official OK for restaurants to resume indoor dining, provided that each establishment operated at reduced capacity, that the tables were rearranged to ensure adequate distance between customers, and that restaurant employees wore face masks while they worked.
When Kris Hauser, a longtime server at the Village Inn in Farmersville, clocked in for her first shift since the pandemic began, she wore a surgical-style face mask that she'd brought from home. But according to WHIO and her now-viral Facebook post, she was immediately stopped by her boss and given a cloth mask with "Trump 2020" printed on it. Hauser said she asked whether she could wear the mask inside out, and she was allowed to work her hours with the words "Trump 2020" pressed against the lower half of her face. (She also wrote that her unnamed boss told her that she "can't be for Biden." )
The next day, she wore another single-use surgical mask after she said she was given the OK to rotate the 'Trump' mask if she hadn't had a chance to launder it after her shift. She wrote that she'd been at the restaurant for 45 minutes before the owner, Scott Jacobs, told Hauser and the masked bartender to change into their 'Trump 2020' masks.
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqdwb/restaurant-worker-says-she-was-fired-for-refusing-to-wear-trump-2020-mask
Voter turnout soared in Georgia despite massive primary day problems
Voter turnout soared in Georgia despite massive primary day problems
Democrats cast close to a million votes in the Senate primary, more than triple the number in the 2016 primary.
June 12, 2020, 4:35 PM EDT
By Dareh Gregorian
Despite massive problems at the voting booth, Democratic turnout in Georgia's primaries skyrocketed — with three times as many votes cast in the Senate primary as in 2016.
With 91 percent of the vote in as of Friday, nearly 960,000 voters had cast ballots in the Democratic Senate primary race won by Jon Ossoff, compared to 310,000 who voted in the Senate primary in 2016.
The Democratic turnout was also higher than it was in the gubernatorial primary in 2018, which saw 550,000 ballots cast.
"The bottom line is that, despite all of the problems at the polls on Tuesday, it appears that there was a big increase in turnout over 2018, especially on the Democratic side," Abramowitz said. "And over 900,000 votes cast in the Democratic Senate primary blows the 310,000 votes cast in the 2016 Democratic Senate primary out of the water."
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/voter-turnout-soared-georgia-despite-massive-primary-day-problems-n1230806
The Parallel Universe of Ivanka Trump, America's Dissociated Princess
The Trumps
The Parallel Universe of Ivanka Trump, America’s Dissociated Princess
It’s a stunning misread of this turbulent moment for one of the most privileged and powerful people in the nation to tell students about how important it is to listen to her, when she should be doing the listening.
By Emily Jane Fox
June 9, 2020
It happened for the first time just about a week into Donald Trump’s first term into office. The new commander in chief signed an executive order banning individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States on a Friday evening. Families were immediately separated and people were detained at airports. By Saturday evening, college students feared for the future of their education. Parents worried that they wouldn’t be able to see their children. Lawyers rushed to file lawsuits over the policy. Americans, already heavy-hearted, boiled over with worry about what America under Trump would turn into. And Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and senior adviser, posted a photo of herself in a $4,990 metallic gown, tucked into her husband’s tuxedo-ed arm as they headed out to the annual Alfalfa Club dinner. The world was burning, it seemed, live, on television, and Ivanka was tuned into an entirely different channel.
She felt terrible, people around her told me at the time. She had been observing Shabbat all evening Friday into Saturday, and had been unaware of the controversy her father had created, they said.
The excuses and the remorse dwindled over time, though the incidents of how Ivanka ran on an entirely different track from the most controversial and offensive pieces of her father’s administration, of which she is a senior and central member, continued. Like when she went on a spring break ski trip when her father tried to repeal Obamacare, or on a couples trip to Vermont in the midst of the Charlottesville protests. Or when Ivanka would frequently post professionally edited videos of herself on trips overseas or to factories around the country while the president fanned flames over immigration, Russian interference, Joe Biden, impeachment, and so on and on and on. As the global pandemic gripped the nation and parents grappled with working from home without childcare or schools in session, along with economic uncertainty, unemployment rising, and the weight of explaining this all to cooped up children, President Trump played down the virus’s impact and Ivanka posted a years-old photo of her and her children leaning on throw pillows scattered across a floor, under sheets arranged as a makeshift tent. “Staying home today w/ kids?,” she tweeted. “Plan living room camp out! Throw a bedsheet over some taped together brooms. Plan a menu & ‘pack’ sandwiches, salads (S’mores optional) A fun activity that also brings family together for a meal!” A little less than two weeks later, she tweeted a video of herself, bare faced and stripped of the staged-ness of the tent photograph, urging Americans to follow shelter-in-place orders. “Those lucky enough to be in a position to stay at home, please, please do so,” she said into the camera. “Each and every one of us plays a role in slowing the spread.” Days later, she and her family ignored federal orders asking Americans to avoid discretionary travel, as they left Washington for another one of their family homes, on her father’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, to celebrate Passover.
Ivanka’s ability to operate on this otherworldly separate track—both from the president and from the everyday realities and rules that surround most Americans—was both an asset to the kind of power she cared about and a contrast from her father. She ignored the harsher realities of the administration she was part of by creating a distinct narrative that she could market to those who were open to buying it as a way to both aid her father and whatever role she would ultimately decide to take on once he leaves the White House. It is a kind of impulse control and compartmentalization that the elder Trump does not possess. Her father is temperamentally unable not to dwell on and rave about exactly what is on his mind or the public consciousness at that precise moment, even when it’s in his obvious political interest to do so. Last Friday, with the nation in the midst of its worst unrest in decades, he sent out hundreds of tweets. On Tuesday, with his advisers, as Axios reported, pushing him to find a calming message of unity, he suggested in a tweet that the elderly activist who was pushed down by police in Buffalo and remains in a serious condition may have “fell harder than was pushed.”
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/the-parallel-universe-of-ivanka-trump-americas-disassociated-princess#intcid=recommendations_vf-hive-trending-legacy_6ea46faf-b858-455f-8a76-838a06679ca3_popular4-1
You Don't Have to Publish Both Sides When One Side Is Fascism
June 29/July 6, 2020, Issue
You Don’t Have to Publish Both Sides When One Side Is Fascism
Elite media still hasn’t figured out how to cover the Trump presidency.
By Eric Alterman
Yesterday 5:00 am
The Trump administration and its Republican enablers are fighting a series of wars directed at targets inside the United States. A partial list would include immigrants, African Americans, Jews, poor people, middle-class people, people with student loan debts, the environment, voting rights, fair elections, blue-state taxpayers, the rule of law, honest elections, and all forms of accountability for Donald Trump, his family, and the criminals who helped him get elected. Because these are by and large unpopular causes, and it is the job of the press to let the public know what is going on, journalists are also a necessary, if ancillary, target. That explains Trump’s frequent use of the phrase “enemies of the people,” which had been the go-to charge of dictators and mass murderers, as well as his incessantly parroted mantra “fake news.”
Those running the country’s elite media institutions have no experience with a situation like this and still cannot figure out how to handle it. Historically, media machers have seen themselves as collaborators with government officials to ensure that things run smoothly for whoever is in power. They do this, in part, because they believe in the cause and, in part, to obtain access, quotes, and the public pretense of respect. When James Reston, who was then The New York Times’ most influential columnist, published an op-ed in 1979 titled “By Henry Kissinger With James Reston,” he did so not with shame but pride.
Reston was flacking for a man who directed a secret, unconstitutional war in Cambodia and Laos and illegally wiretapped journalists and the members of his own staff to determine who leaked the news to Reston’s paper. US government officials, especially but not exclusively Republicans, have been lying to the American people about matters of life and death for a long time. The mainstream media eventually righted itself under President Richard Nixon’s assault on our democratic institutions, but its ability to do so today under Trump, an even greater threat to American democracy, is considerably diminished. The reasons for this are complex. Some are economic, others technological. But during the present crisis, the biggest problem is that the leaders of the mainstream media cannot make up their minds about the fundamental question of the Trump presidency: “Which side are you on?”
The top editors of almost all of America’s mainstream media institutions have explicitly rejected the notion of a journalism of opposition. While The New York Times and The Washington Post, for instance, have tallied Trump’s untruths—separate from the articles in which they are repeated verbatim—neither has proved willing to reconsider its commitment to the mindless both-sides style of reporting in which Republican lies and incitements to fascist violence are given equal weight to Democratic attempts to tell the truth and defend democracy.
Thanks to Trump’s response to the protests against police brutality, however, the jig is up. Military leaders past and present and even a few Republicans have had enough. It is not OK for Trump to demand a military attack on our own citizens and then lie about having done so. And yet at this moment, New York Times opinion editors offered American journalism’s most prestigious real estate to Senator Tom Cotton to make the case for Trump’s proposed assault.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tom-cotton-new-york-times/
Trump: 'We're Dominating the Street With Compassion' When Using 'Force' Against Protesters
I never thought the word 'compassion' would ever issue from his piehole, even in this negative context. 
Trump: ‘We’re Dominating the Street With Compassion’ When Using ‘Force’ Against Protesters
Peter Wade
With peaceful protests ongoing nationwide, President Trump continued using harsh rhetoric and called for aggressive police tactics to halt constitutionally-protected demonstrations.
While discussing a forthcoming executive order on police reform at a roundtable event in Dallas on Thursday, the president used terms like “force,” “real strength” and “real power” when describing how law enforcement should handle protests, which are a right guaranteed by the first amendment.
“If [authorities] are really gonna have to do a job, if somebody is really bad, you’re gonna have to do with it real strength, with real power,” the president said.
Trump went on to speak about the backlash he faced following the leaking of audio from a conference call with the nation’s governors last week, where he told them to crack down hard on protesters, instructing them to “dominate the streets.” During that call, Trump also encouraged the governors to request military assistance.
“I said, we’re gonna have to dominate the streets… And I was criticized for that statement. And they said, ‘That’s such a terrible thing,’” the president said.
Trump continued to applause, telling the audience that he will stick to what he’s been saying about dominating the streets. But he then added an Orwellian twist, explaining that by endorsing brute force against protesters he’s actually acting compassionately.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-dominating-the-street-with-compassion-force-against-protesters-1013879/
Hundreds of West Point alumni call out Esper over military's role in protests
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/502387-hundreds-of-west-point-alumni-call-out-esper-over-militarys-role-in-protestsHundreds of West Point alumni call out Esper over military's role in protests
By Ellen Mitchell - 06/11/20 08:30 PM EDT
Hundreds of West Point graduates are calling out top Pentagon leaders for failing to uphold the Constitution in their response to the nation-wide protests this month, according to a letter penned by a coalition of concerned alumni.
The letter, published by Medium and addressed to the school's class of 2020, comes two days before President Trump’s scheduled speech at the school’s commencement and commissioning ceremony. The 1,000 graduating West Point cadets were called back to campus for the event despite the coronavirus pandemic.
“Today, our Constitutional aspirations remain unfulfilled,” they added.
snip//
Melania Forced Trump to Renegotiate Prenup
https://politicalwire.com/2020/06/12/melania-forced-trump-to-renegotiate-prenup/Melania Forced Trump to Renegotiate Prenup
June 12, 2020 at 6:50 am EDT By Taegan Goddard
“Those stories are true, but Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book that the first lady was also using her delayed arrival to the White House as leverage for renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with President Trump.”
Watchdog: CBP money meant for food, medical care for migrants was spent on ATVs, dirt bikes
Repulsive.
Watchdog: CBP money meant for food, medical care for migrants was spent on ATVs, dirt bikes
By J. Edward Moreno - 06/11/20 06:21 PM EDT
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spent some of the $112 million appropriated to the agency for food and medical care for migrants on ATVs, dirt bikes and boats, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Thursday.
The report came after the House Homeland Security Committee asked the GAO to audit how the agency spent emergency funding allocated to it last year under a border funding bill.
The bill was passed when asylum-seekers were flooding CBP processing centers, where many of them are still being held and have reported poor conditions.
"Instead of helping migrants and improving conditions on the ground, CBP then broke the law by spending this taxpayer money on things that were not authorized—such as ATVs, dirt bikes, and computer systems,” he added.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/502362-gao-cbp-money-meant-for-food-medical-care-for-migrants-spent-on-on
David Corn: Trump Just Showed Us His Core Campaign Message: Chaos In the Streets
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/trump-just-showed-us-his-core-campaign-message-chaos-in-the-streets/Trump Just Showed Us His Core Campaign Message: Chaos In the Streets
“It’s time for this madness to END.”
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow
Chaos in the streets. Looters running free. Rioters threatening you and your family. Anarchists destroying…everything. And there’s only one way to stop the end of civilization: re-elect Donald J. Trump as president.
That’s what Trump’s core campaign message is becoming. While once Trump intended to run in 2020 on the strength of the US economy, he has now shifted to a new narrative: Americans are in immediate danger due to the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread across the nation. Focusing on the limited violence and looting that has accompanied the demonstrations (which have mostly been peaceful), Trump is selling a dark and apocalyptic vision. The end is nigh, unless Trump can deliver the “LAW & ORDER,” he repeatedly vows in his tweets.
snip//
Trump clearly wants to duck responsibility for the civil unrest that has occurred on his watch while positioning himself as the thin orange line between stability and societal collapse. It’s American Carnage, Part II. In this script, protesters are malicious marauders who are heading to your town. And Trump alone can protect you and your loved ones from the angry (black?) hordes. It’s a campaign of fear and loathing. It trades racist dog whistles for bullhorns. As millions of Americans are rising up to demand adherence to the nation’s professed values of justice and equality, Trump is fostering an atmosphere of darkness, despair, and doom. Be scared, my fellow Americans, be very scared, he says. Because then he has a better chance of winning your vote.
This is the message his campaign has begun unleashing in a highly coordinated fashion. “The radical Democrats went off the deep end this week, voicing their full-fledged support for defunding our law enforcement while bending the knee to rioters and looters,” Kimberly Guilfoyle, national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee, huffed on Wednesday. Bending the knee to rioters? The intent of that clever phrase is obvious; it equates the demonstrations against police violence to acquiescence to looting. They are all thugs: Colin Kaepernick, Nancy Pelosi, the protesters, and the criminals. “It is vital that we re-elect President Trump to keep Joe Biden and the socialist mob from destroying everything that makes America great,” Mercedes Schlapp, a top strategist for the Trump campaign, proclaimed this week, “Trump is standing up for law and order, while the radical Democrats have refused to condemn violence in our cities and are working to defund the law enforcement officers who have prevented chaos in our streets.”
The buzz words are glaring. Let’s push those buttons: Chaos, mob, law and order. That’s the plan. Trump can no longer politically exploit the economy. He cannot tout (convincingly) his inept response to the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 110,000 Americans. He can only cook up a fictitious threat, incite terror, stir panic—and posture as the strong man who can beat back an imaginary calamity. He is a scared president trying to whip up phantom threats he can then boast of defeating. This is how he is appealing for support. This will likely be a key theme in the campaign rallies he is starting next week, with a kick-off in Tulsa, Oklahoma (where 99 years ago, there was indeed a race riot…with white people destroying a black neighborhood and massacring scores of its residents).
Trump likes chaos. He doesn’t play by the rules. He is not encumbered by truth or by norms of decency. His pitch now is that he can save America from anarchy and disarray. This latest con of his is hardly surprising. Perhaps the more troubling matter is how far Trump is willing to go as president to create the discord that he believes he needs to hold on to power.
The Rude Pundit: Donald Trump Wants More Violence at the BLM Protests So He Can Act Tough
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2020/06/donald-trump-wants-more-violence-at-blm.htmlThe Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
6/11/2020
Donald Trump Wants More Violence at the BLM Protests So He Can Act Tough
snip//
I think, sincerely, that Trump and his people wanted to provoke the protesters near the White House to violence. They wanted a riot that could be put down by overwhelming force. They knew that the news networks would play the speech in split screen and what could be better than Trump declaring that "I am your President of law and order" as order was being beaten and tear-gassed into the savages who would dare attack our brave cops and soldiers. Trump wanted to justify his call for violence by showing the world that he could control the burgeoning uprising.
Except that's not what happened. No, instead, the protesters were outraged but they moved. They resisted with voices and with bodies somewhat, but that was it. And the images that were pouring out were not those of brick-throwing "Antifa rioters" being stopped by Trump-ordered force. Instead, they were of peaceful protesters being beaten and tear-gassed. The cops and the troops looked like the savages, the animals, not the protesters.
snip//
Right now, the nation - hell, the world - is convulsing in revulsion at what the United States is and has been. We've finally reached a moment when real, actual structural change may happen. At the very least, we're purging our public displays of blatant racism by knocking down statues and banning the flag of traitors. Performative empathy on the mistreatment of African Americans by white people isn't enough anymore, and it's about fucking time. Shit has needed to be burned down for a long time, and it's finally seeming like it won't be the fire next time that does it.
And the presidency of Donald Trump is going up in those flames. So he's going to push harder and harder to cause explosions, real ones instead of emotional ones, in the protest movement. I wouldn't be surprised to see Proud Boys and other racist fucknuts show up to try to provoke it, too, in even greater numbers than they have been. He knows his reelection chances are plummeting, and he's gotta discredit this movement that is walking all over his stupid face. He's gonna get more and more desperate, like a snarling, cornered rat who thinks it can snap and scamper to its freedom.
Trump's like all those fuckin' yahoos who stand around and watch the marches with their hands on their pathetic AR-15s, itching for the opportunity to use it. Except he's the yahoo with an entire military at his disposal. The greatest hope right now, sadly, is that the military leaders seem like they're just embarrassed by all of this. Let's hope that is enough for them to reject the order that Trump so badly wants to give.
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